Danae with Nursemaid When he was over fifty years old Titian painted the first of the series of Danae paintings, today hanging in various European museums: Napoli Museo di Capodimonte, Museo del Prado in Madrid, Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Viena. Scholars note that at least some of the work in the [...]
Titian’s Venus The Venus of Urbino is one of Titian’s best known paintings, and probably his most provocative. Portraying a young female model, who according to some scholars appeared in other artist’s pieces, the work feeds the ambiguity regarding the protagonist’s social status by blurring generic boundaries. It is a pagan allegory, it is a [...]
Titian’s Assunta Titian’s altarpiece “The Assumption of the Virgin,” hanging in Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, is a large scale painting both in size and concept. It accommodates multiple characters, including the apostles, The Virgin Mary, and God, as well as countless angels and cherubims — all organized in dense but clearly [...]
Mona Lisa The Mona Lisa, also known as The Gioconda, has gained the status of “the most famous painting in the world” due to a combination of various bohemian predilections and series of events, most of which evolved and took place during the 20th century. “The most famous” is not necessarily the “most beautiful,” as [...]
Madonna of the Rocks The Virgin of the Rocks exists in two variations, one hanging in the Louvre, another in the London National Gallery. Almost identical in terms of composition and mood, the paintings differ in palette and brushwork, one displaying a more a naturalistic lighting and coloring, the other a more poetic and stylized, [...]